Point and Shoot and Cross Your Fingers

Because they are wonderful people who know how much I love toys, my husband and daughter got me a new camera for Mother's Day (which, yes, was a hundred years ago, but I have stuff going on, SHUT UP). Just a small little point-and-shoot, something in between Nikon-the-Wonder-Cam and the camera feature in my iPhone which is basically devoted to Instagrams of my garden because HELLO BEAUTIFUL SPRING. It's small, it fits in my pocket, and it will be great for those late afternoons in July when it's too danged hot and I'm too damned tired to carry my gigantic 12-lb. camera bag 500 yards to the playground.

Plus, IT'S PURPLE, y'all. They got me a purple camera. They were hiding under my porch because they love me.

You know you wouldn't be reading my blog if I didn't completely cop to "testing out the new camera" by setting up an impromptu "picnic" photoshoot in the backyard. Although in the interest of full disclosure, I wouldn't even have had the energy to do this if I hadn't gotten out of work yesterday at 11:30 due to an "evironmental hazard situation" (i.e., somebody got plaster on their desk from the work the roofers were doing and freaked right the hell out. Thank you, fellow hypochondriac with internet access!)

BTW, that isn't one of our cats hanging out with Shae. That's one of the semi-feral neighborhood kittens who lives under my back porch. We are not happy about this situation -- well, G and I aren't, but Shae is just thrilled. She calls them her babies and has named them all, even though technically their actual owners have (allegedly) named them. I don't know what Shae says their names are (I can't remember anything any more), but I call them Larry, Darryl, and Darryl because I can't tell them apart. (This one is Larry, the boy. I know he's a boy because he just loves to show us his, ahem, hairballs.)

Have to say, I really do like this camera. You can tell that the image quality is different from the Wonder-Cam, but for a point-and-shoot, it's pretty good. I still have to play around with the settings and stuff to figure out how everything works, to see if I can replicate some of the features of the DSLR, like the "Child" setting which is my very favorite because it's like instant Photoshop. I can't get that nice shallow depth-of-field effect that I get with my favorite telephoto lens because this camera doesn't have one, but like I said, it will be great for those late afternoons in July when it's too danged hot and I'm too damned tired to carry my gigantic 12-lb. camera bag 500 yards to the playground. (Also: easier to carry onto Space Mountain, when the time comes.)

I do need to learn how to work the focus better. I think it has auto-focus, but it also has a touchscreen, which is new and fancy and confusing and I'm such a Luddite that I haven't figured it out yet. Although, let's just admit it: it's going to be hard for me to get truly bad pictures with any camera when I have such a lovely model-muse. And it's not like I'm going to be able to get her to slow down or sit still or FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE LOOK AT ME AND SMILE no matter how sophisticated the equipment, anyway. (But that is why I have a niece who loves to look right at the camera and yell "Cheese!" At least for now.)